Today is the 157th anniversary of one of the worst defeats in U.S. military history

The Battle of Fredericksburg.

Ambrose Burnside and his 122,000 men of the Union Army of the Potomac faced off against the 78,000 men of Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. In terms of troops involved, the Battle of Fredericksburg would be the largest battle of the Civil War.

Elements of Burnside's army had fought their way across the Rappahannock River and into Fredericksburg on December 11. All throughout the day on December 12, Burnside marched his army across the river via pontoon bridges. Arrayed against Burnside, Lee's army was well dug in on the ridges behind the town. Any attack against his lines would be up hill over wide open ground. Edward Porter Alexander, the famed artillery captain, remarked to Lee that "a chicken couldn't live on that field" once his artillery opened up on the attacking Federals.

Burnside's attack plan for December 13 would be to strike at Lee's right flank, held by Stonewall Jackson's 35,000 men, with his I and VI Corps. The hope was that the attack would turn Jackson's line and then hook right, where it would then trap Longstreet's 40,000 men entrenched atop Marye's Heights. To support the attacks on Jackson, elements of the II Corps would apply pressure to Longstreet atop Marye's Heights.




The morning of December 13, 1862, dawned cold and gray. A heavy fog had settled over the battlefield, forcing the Union army to delay the start of the attack. It was during this interlude that Major General William Franklin, commander of the "Right Grand Division" ordered his I Corps commander - Major General John F. Reynolds - to select a single division to attack Jackson's line. Reynolds chose his smallest, that of George G. Meade. The division of John Gibbon was assigned by Reynolds to support Meade's attack.

When the fog finally lifted around 10:30 AM, the order was given to commence the attack. Meade's 4,500 men went forward and immediately found a gap in Jackson's position. Chaos reigned as the division of Union soldiers poured into the breach and began to attack unsuspecting Confederate units in their flank. Thousands of Confederates broke and ran due to the ferocity of Meade's attack. The breakthrough Burnside had planned for was now possible if the Union army would simply follow up the attack by pouring reinforcements into the breach. For whatever reason, those reinforcements were never ordered forward and Meade was left to fight Jackson's entire force all by himself. The weight of Confederate numbers soon began to tell as Jackson rushed reinforcements into the area to contain Meade's advance. While some 40,000 Union soldiers looked on from a distance, Jackson's forces violently expelled Meade's division from their lines with frightful losses on both sides.

Jackson ordered an immediate counterattack, led by Jubal Early's division. The remaining divisions of the I Corps - those of Gibbon and Birney - were there to receive the attack. Jackson quickly realized the futility of attacking the Union position and ordered his men to fall back to the safety of their own lines. Some 5,000 Union soldiers had fallen killed or wounded in the attack, compared to 3,400 casualties for Jackson. But the Union army had missed out on a golden opportunity to deal a decisive blow to the Confederate army. Of the 40,000 men present for duty on that part of the field, scarcely half of them saw action against Jackson's forces.

The battle shifted to the north, where the Union II Corps had turned its demonstration against Marye's Heights into a full blown attack. A single Confederate brigade, backed up by artillery, took up position at the base of the heights behind a chest-high stonewall. Four Union divisions from the II and V Corps made multiple assaults against the stonewall and were all thrown back with staggering losses. Some 7,500 Union soldiers were shot down in front of Marye's Heights without ever coming close to penetrating the Confederate position.

Mercifully, Burnside called a halt to the attacks. Some 12,500 Union soldiers lay dead, dying, and wounded in the fields between the two armies. The Confederates lost barely 5,000 men in total. While overlooking the carnage that lay before him, Lee is said to have remarked: "It is well that war is so terrible, for we should grow too fond of it."